The military veteran who was just humiliated by a vile telephone prank orchestrated by a pair of online deviants is too embarrassed to pursue criminal charges, according to Texas police.

The man, a 22-year-old former Army paratrooper who served in Iraq, was victimized during a December 5 call to his room at a Motel 6 in Amarillo. That prank call, which TSG previously detailed here, was placed by Steven Brown, 43, and Tariq Malik, 26, mainstays with Pranknet, the notorious online collective.

Brown, a McHenry, Illinois resident who works as a computer programmer, is pictured above in a webcam image he recently broadcast in Pranknet’s chat room. Malik, the group’s founder, is an unemployed Canadian who lives in Windsor, Ontario.

In an e-mail, Amarillo Police Department Corporal Jerry Neufeld reported that the prank’s target--whom TSG has only identified by his first name, Sam--“doesn’t want to pursue charges…I don’t think he wants all the publicity we would need in order to file charges. He would have to be willing to testify in court about what took place that night, and he is too embarrassed to relive it again.”

During the prank, Brown (who posed as a hotel manager) and Malik told Sam that a prior occupant of his room had tested positive for the H1N1 virus. Malik, pretending to be a doctor who was following instructions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, convinced Sam to consume his own bodily waste as a way of combating the swine flu’s onset.

Neufeld said that if Sam were to change his mind about pressing charges, he would have to contact Amarillo cops before the statute of limitations expires. For example, Neufeld added, the statute on limitations on telephone harassment, a Class B misdemeanor, is two years.

I'm sorry, but I don't care if you served your country or not, if you're living in the twenty-first century and you're this gullible, then you've got it coming to you. I laughed at all the comments about murdering or assaulting the people that did it, or making them eat crap. You know you're a good person when you would put people in front of a firing squad for a prank call.

Seriously, has no one here heard of the McDonald's strip search prank call? There are a TON of psychological influences involved in situations like these. The employees in Mt. Washington, and Samuel himself, were both told to do things by individuals whom the victims (and all of us, really) have been taught their whole lives to respect, trust, and obey. For the McDonald's employees, that was a supposed police officer. For Samuel, it was a supposed doctor. It is amazing what people will do when ordered to by people in power. The Milgram shock experiments? Anyone? The guys who did this aren't just prank callers -- they're technically criminals. And not only that, they're preying on the learned weaknesses and assumptions of normal people for their own childish entertainment. I hope that Samuel does end up charging them. It would be less than they deserved.

I have to agree that the soldier should most definitely press charges. These POS pervs deserve to spend time in prison for what they did. I also understand how the soldier feels about being embarrassed to make this any more public than it already is. Too bad there can't be a better way to do this. Men and the Military being the 'juveniles' they are at times they will probably make his life miserable after it becomes generally known who he is and where he is stationed. He DOES need to step forward and help get these pervs off the street though. Their 'prank' could have seriously hurt someone or even made them very sick. They need to be made to have a full course Scat meal fed to them by everyone in prison if they manage to get put there for what they did. Let's hope their fellow inmates will read about this and serve them the 'meal' they deserve.

You're definitely right - Malik and this guy look like they couldn't get laid in a whore house with a fist full of $100 bills. In the real world they probably get their asses kicked on a regular basis
Pretty sad that the only "good" thing they'll ever have in their pathetic lives is making prank calls.

These guys are complete morons. I heard a skit that was done to an ESPN reporter. She was convinced that there was a fire in the hotel and that she should smash the window with a large projectile. To work over somone in a time where they feel their safety is in danger is just wrong. I would love to see these dudes catch the beating of their lives. This is the problem now a days we can't hit people anymore and because of which idiots like this walk the earth without fear of retribution.

Interesting that Brown, like Malik, looks every bit the pathetic loser that he is. How much of a failure as a human being can one person be? (I first typed "one man," but Brown clearly does not qualify on that count.) Hey Brown: Do yourself and the world a favor. Go ahead and follow through on the fantasy. Put the barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger. You know you really want to. And you are absolutely right: no one will care when you are gone.